$ZB contains a string specifying the input terminator for the last terminal READ. $ZB is null, and it is not maintained for devices other than terminals. $ZB may contain any legal input terminator, such as <CR> (ASCII 13) or an escape sequence starting with <ESC> (ASCII 27), from zero (0) to 15 bytes in length. $ZB is null for any READ terminated by a timeout or any fixed-length READ terminated by input reaching the maximum length.

$ZB contains the actual character string, not a sequence of numeric ASCII codes.

Example:

    SET zb=$ZB FOR i=1:1:$LENGTH(zb) WRITE !,i,?5,$A(zb,i)
    

This example displays the series of ASCII codes for the characters in $ZB.

$ZB refers to the last READ terminator of the current device. Therefore, be careful when sequencing USE commands and references to $ZB.